Wednesday, April 18, 2012

So I left you guys hanging on my story of weight loss. I’m sure you are on pins and needles wondering how I did it.

I downloaded this FREE app on my Iphone called My Fitness Pal.

I seriously believe that his app was what aided me the most in this journey. When you sign up you will input your weight, decide how many pounds you want to lose a week, and what weight you want to achieve. Based on your weight and weight loss goal there will be a suggested daily calorie intake.

Note from my sister (AKA the future Registered Dietician): You really should not eat less than 1500 calories per day. If you stick to 1500 calories daily you will cut about 3500 calories a week which equals one pound of weight loss.

The reason this app helped me so much is because it made me learn about calories. I had NO clue about what was in food. You seriously will be appalled if you have a 1500 calorie allowance and decide you want fast food for lunch. There goes more than HALF of your calories for the day.

This app is excellent because you can look up different foods from different restaurants or from the grocery store and there will be a calorie amount. There is also an option to enter in a recipe with the ingredients and serving size and it will tell you the calorie content.

So what did I eat? Here’s a super rough guideline of what I did a few years ago. I’m going to talk more about what I eat now in a later post.

Breakfast:

Grits and Toast

Cereal (serving size) with 2% milk

Lunch:

Lean Cuisines

Excellent because there is not guessing on calories. Be careful when choosing meals. Some have a ton of calories. I tried to keep lunch under 350 calories.

Sandwich with Turkey and chips pre-packaged

Baked/Grilled Chicken with Broccoli

Snack:

Banana

Apple

100 Calories Snack Packs

100 Calorie Popcorn

Supper:

Whatever I decided to cook for dinner. I just ate smaller portions.

Helpful Hint: You NEED to have a cheat day. I promise, for your own sanity, eat what you love. If it’s Mexican food, eat some chips and hot sauce. If it’s cake, eat cake. Just be careful and don’t over indulge! Eat a smaller amount and don’t stuff yourself.

So what I want you to take away from losing weight is this:

You MUST/HAVE/NEED TO, be aware of every morsel you put into your mouth!

MAKE yourself input EVERY.SINGLE.PIECE.OF.FOOD. that you put in your mouth. Don’t lie to yourself and say, “Oh it’s just one tiny piece of chocolate” or “Oh it’s only one tiny bite of cake” I’m just not going to enter it. Enter EVERYTHING!

If you cheat, you are just cheating yourself.

You WILL get frustrated when you don’t think you are losing weight fast enough. I had to really remind myself that it took me years of gaining weight and it was going to take longer than a month to lose it. You can’t give up if you don’t lose a pound in two weeks.

After I lost about 10 pounds, I plateaued. I was at 150 and I knew I needed to lose a few more pounds. It wasn’t until a YEAR after I started my weight loss journey that I finally bucked up and joined a gym. That’s helped me lose and keep off those 5 extra pounds.